History
The year is now 2308. Humanity has spread across the solar system and bounced back after a history of devastating wars and disaster. Earth is a mechanical supercity with 119 levels, housing over 15 trillion people. Humans only recently went back to reproducing naturally, after spawning in vats for nearly a century. The value of a life is less than a credit, and a credit is only worth a dime. It’s a world where space pirates, bioandroids, mutants, gruff detectives, cyborg ninjas, corporate suits, gangsters, psychic cults, deadly space aliens and seedy government conspiracies all coexist. Where reality is as augmented as your body, but you spend your time diving the Universal Net anyway, because one minute of virtual happiness helps you forget how little you matter. Major Wars All throughout human existence, eras of technological and social progress were marked by bookends of bloodshed. Many would say that the history of war is the history of humankind. This sentiment rings doubly true in the 24th century following war after devastating war, each forever altering the record of the human species. * The Warp War - 2075-2076AD * The Dominion War - 2190-2192AD * The Solar Civil War - 2254-2264AD * The Krut Conflict - 2276AD (Ongoing) Official Timeline 2026AD – USA, China, Russia, Japan, the European Union and other wealthy nations begin the process of privatizing space. International conglomerates monopolize space travel and colonization. Tensions rise over the disparity in power between wealthy nations and the poor. 2033AD – International efforts to establish a colony on Luna bear fruit. The colony is founded by Frederick Rubinsky, a multi-billionaire and entrepreneur whose company, Rubinsky Aerospace, would later go on to be reformed into the now-ubiquitous Future Forward, Corp. 2039AD – Swedish physicist Klas Isaak succeeds in artificially creating and isolating a particle with negative mass. The particle is dubbed the Negaton. 2045AD – Many years later and with vastly more funding, Klas Isaak succeeds in creating enough negatons to fuel a reaction in a warp chamber. He succeeds in proving the theories of Miguelle Alcubierre, half a century later. 2052AD – The United States launches its first sublightspeed, warp-capable spacecraft and sends it around the sun and back in just under a year. The future potential seems limitless. 2053AD – First contact is made with the Q’sir, a highly advanced extraterrestrial species from across the Galaxy. The Q’sir admit they had been monitoring humanity’s technological progress, and revealed themselves when mankind discovered Warp technology. The Q’sir offer a deal to Rubinsky Aerospace, the first Human organization they come into contact with. They offer to trade a great wealth of scientific and technological information in exchange for as large a collection of human cultural artifacts and media that they could get their hands on. Rubinsky Aerospace agrees and receives the Lagrange 1 Box, named after the location in orbit where the trade was conducted. The existence of the Q'sir is kept secret from most of the world, and the contents of the Box are immediately put to intense scrutiny. 2059AD – Global tensions rise over the monopolization of warp technology. The world splits into two large alliances, one consisting of those who have warp, and one consisting of those who don’t. The former is called The Pan-Continental Alliance – those who have warp. The latter is called the Progressive Pact – those who don’t. 2075AD – A large conspiracy comes to light – the Progressive Pact had planned to steal warp technology from the Pan-Continental Union. This leads first to terrorist attacks, then “police actions,” and then to all-out war, eventually culminating in the use of nuclear weapons by all sides in an attempt to squash their opposition once and for all. Although many missiles are shot down, enough bombs impact the Earth to result in the near-annihilation of human society. Whole landscapes are obliterated, and billions die from the explosions and radioactive aftermath. While approximately one million people manage to survive the war on Earth, the majority of surviving humans (approximately thirty million) reside in colonies on Luna and Mars or artificial space stations. 2079AD – Driven by necessity, the invention of radiation collecting micromachines allows humanity to begin the effort of cleaning the Earth. Although radioactive material is scrubbed from the atmosphere, the ground and soil are irreversibly polluted. With no government entities still remaining on Earth, citizens living in space look to what remains of Rubinsky Aerospace and other space corporations for guidance. Some survivors on Earth maintain small local communities, but most are ferried to colonies in space. 2088AD – Rubinsky Aerospace rebrands itself as Future Forward Corporation and takes the lead in organizing a temporary, ad-hoc government on Luna. Other corporations follow suit and create local governments on other colonies. 2090AD – The various corporate governments begin the process of recolonizing the Earth after the first few zones are cleared of radiation. Increasing logistical requirements create the need for a more organized, centralized effort. 2100AD – The corporate governments form a Federation, calling themselves the United Earth Federation (UEF). Large sections of the planet's surface are flattened and paved over with metal and concrete, and citizens of the colonies in space began to move back to Earth. As operations expand, more bureaucracy is required. There is tumult over the lack of organization on the ground level. 2101AD – Survivors of the war and their descendants return to Earth in a mass exodus, most returning to their ancestral homelands in an effort to retain their cultures. 2104AD – The citizens of the UEF demand that the corporations divest their financial interests from the newly created government apparatus. After much deliberation, the corporations decide to create an executive council of scientists, each a member of a different company, to oversee government affairs. The citizens accept this, and the government reforms. It is renamed the “Neo-Earth Directorate.” 2105AD – The Neo-Earth Directorate institutes draconian policies in an effort to safeguard the Human species from ever coming near extinction again. First, a mandatory breeding program is instituted. All humans are required to donate their sperm or egg to government biogenesis facilities, where children are created in artificial wombs en masse. Scientists carefully select for each child to minimize inbreeding, but otherwise ignore the prospect of eugenics entirely. Second, all resources are focused on developing the technology and infrastructure to spread, settle and procreate. Genetics, computing, materials science, structural engineering, nanotechnology, ecology, geology and orbital mechanics are some of the areas that are pursued relentlessly. On the other hand, research into military technology, physics, quantum mechanics, cosmology, history, bioethics, nearly every social science and many other fields falls largely by the wayside. 2125AD – Advances in medical technology and cybernetics coupled with the mandatory breeding program lead to a sudden population explosion in a single generation. This trend continues for the foreseeable future and only continues to grow in orders of magnitude. 2129AD – Advances in nanotechnology, geology, ecology, chemistry and the understanding of planetary formation and orbital mechanics lead to breakthroughs in the science of terraforming. The process of rapidly transforming many celestial bodies into habitable words begins. 2131AD – Advances in materials engineering and nanotechnology lead the Directorate to establish a wide-scale industrialization program to accommodate for the growing population on Earth. The ruined, blasted surface of the earth is rapidly transformed into a sprawling concrete jungle. 2133AD – The Directorate launches the first Drone Fabricator, a massive 3km long spaceship operated autonomously by AI, designed to function as a mobile mining platform and a base for constructive nanobots and the drones required to put finished products together. The Drone Fabricator begins constructing the first Warp Gate. 2138AD – The first human settlement on a terraformed world is made on Ganymede, in the Jupiter planetary system. Colonists benefit greatly from the presence of old, pre-war space stations in orbit. Efforts are made to colonize more worlds. 2142AD – The first secondary tiers of Earth’s hive-city begin to form. A disparity in wealth and quality of life begins to become apparent between those who live on the sunny surface and the fluorescent-lit city below. Efforts are made to resolve this problem by installing massive lamps that mimic sunlight, but this only masks the underlying issues. 2148AD – The first warp gate is completed, and the era of interstellar exploration begins. This is pursued mainly by corporate entities, searching for deposits of rare and valuable resources. 2158AD – The fast-paced technological advances made in recent years start to slow significantly as the government is forced to split its attention between maintaining order and pursuing progress. Disparate standards of living in different colonized regions and different parts of Earth bring about a sense of unease and general social instability. 2175AD – The Directorate’s economic problems worsen as the government struggles to continue self-funding through its corporate counterparts. Riots break out and are brutally suppressed. Tens of thousands are killed. 2190AD – First contact with the Thrakk’l Dominion. Hostilities are opened near immediately due to miscommunication on the part of the involved parties. The Directorate military, small and underdeveloped, is quickly beaten and overwhelmed. 2191AD – The universal language translator is invented, specifically designed to initiate diplomacy with the Thrakk’l. 2192AD – The Directorate government begins to collapse financially and militarily as more and more of its soldiers abandon the army. Mass unrest and violence against government personnel leads to a tyrannical government crackdown in a final attempt to retain power. The crackdown fails miserably and the government falls apart. Citizens form a new, democratic government in its place, re-using the old name of the United Earth Federation. The old Directorate’s corporate counterparts create more conventional lobbies to affect government change, and the society swiftly begins to resemble America in the early 21st century. The Dominion War also ends, after newly elected leaders negotiate successful peace talks with the Thrakk’l. 2193AD – Mass riots break out in the colonies as citizens fight the government and each other over their acceptance of the regime change. The newly reformed UEF military performs a series of expeditions to crack down on the riots, with brutally effective results. Hundreds of thousands of dissidents are killed and millions more imprisoned. The same year, the old Directorate's Biogenesis program is put to an end and human cloning is outlawed. Biogenesis providers begin producing laboratory-engineered, genetically divergent, designer variants of Homo Sapiens in order to get around the ban and rebrand themselves as Android manufacturers. Androids are given no individual rights and are largely seen as inhuman property. They are used as everything from slave laborers or sex workers to bodyguards or butlers, but are only affordable by the wealthy. 2209AD – The new UEF is firmly solidified and completely takes over the corporate infrastructure of the old Directorate. The technology is vastly improved and upscaled to serve as a network for both intra- and interstellar communication. Planetary and stellar networks are combined, now reachable from across the stars. The Universal Net is born. 2212AD – Stability returns for a time as the UEF imposes a series of reforms aimed towards improving quality of life. The first space superhospitals are built and cheap augmentative cybernetics are made widely available. Medical micromachines remain restricted to the upper echelons of society by their cost. 2222AD – Martian Geneticist Monroe Fairuz successfully invents a genetic modification technique with none of the drawbacks of CRISPr, that could potentially be used to eliminate genetic disease entirely. There is outcry in the medical community. 2224AD – Monroe Fairuz’s GeneMachine™ is denied patent, on the grounds that the theory behind it is not adequately understood. The decision is backed by the medical community and the UEF government, but enrages citizens throughout the UEF. 2240AD – Dissent mounts throughout the UEF after a series of journalistic exposès covering the ties between corporations and the old Directorate, as well as their ties with the current UEF government. 2250AD – The once-benevolent UEF government is now popularly seen as oppressive and authoritarian. Heads of state are accused of taking bribes from corporations and dipping into state budgets to perform acts of embezzlement at the bequest of their corporate sponsors. 2254AD – Various secessionist guerilla groups throughout the UEF meet on Titan to discuss a possible alliance. Their alliance is forged, and The Rebellion begins. Led by the charismatic Aleksander Ikthos, the Rebels draw the attention of all of Sol. Their appealing leader and just reasons for fighting also brought some of the greatest scientific minds in human society to their side, producing a highly-advanced, if much smaller fighting force. Brutal fighting ensues for the next ten years. Ownership of border colonies frequently changes hands, and much infrastructure is destroyed. 2263AD – A nuclear weapon is detonated on Earth, obliterating a large section of the acropolis. The UEF government immediately blames the Rebels, but the Rebels deny responsibility. Elsewhere, a corporate scout ship in deep space makes first contact with the Krut. 2264AD – The fighting comes to an end after Calliope Station, the fortress of the regional government of the Saturn System, falls into the hands of the Rebels. Exhausted from the war effort, both sides then agree to stop fighting, under the condition that the Rebels be allowed to form a new government on Titan. The treaty is forged, and the Republic of Titan (RoT) is born. The UEF would keep control of the core worlds – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter. The RoT would keep the outer rim – Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Pluto and beyond. A period of rebuilding and exploration begins. In this time, many more alien species are encountered by exploration vessels. 2272AD – A mining surveyor in a star system full of nebulae and debris encounters another Krut ship, and is destroyed. The UEF and RoT immediately form a military alliance, and send a joint expeditionary force to investigate. Gates are rapidly constructed for direct access to the system. 2273AD – The military alliance allows merchants on both sides to open up negotiations, and trade between the two nations begins. 2276AD – The gates are completed and military vessels and personnel stream through. The endless, exhausting war against the Krut begins. 2300AD – The war with the krut is still going strong, with both the UEF and RoT making rapid strides in advancing their military technology in order to combat the threat. Meanwhile, domestic issues are largely ignored by both sides, leading to widespread corruption. 2308AD – …